Current version: 2.0
Download pre-built images: https://github.com/cmsj/switch_linux_kit/releases/tag/2.0
There are download/install instructions on the download page
This is now being distributed as a pre-built exploit chain, and a pre-built SD card image, so it should be a lot easier to install/run than before. You can still build it all from scratch of course, if you want to (https://github.com/cmsj/switch_linux_kit is the repo and there are instructions in the README.md)
Old post content below:
I've written a script to build a full Ubuntu Desktop image for the Switch (see a screenshot below). There are some instructions here, but be aware that you'll need a Linux machine to both build and run the boot exploit, and to build the Ubuntu image if you don't want to download my image.
First of all, you need to get the fail0verflow exploit/boot chain working. There's a good tutorial for doing the whole thing here or there is a good Docker image you can run that will do the work for you (but you still need the tegra_mtc.bin file (download here courtest of @CptPotato ). This is non-optional whether you want to use a pre-built Ubuntu image or not.
Next, either clone my git repo and run ./build-image.sh or download the bionic.tgz tarball from here. As with all the other systems, you need a micro SD card that is partitioned with one small (formatted) FAT32 partition, and a large (formatted) ext4 partition. Once you have the SD card ready, extract bionic.tgz to it with something like: tar xvf /path/to/bionic.tgz -C /mountpoint/of/SDcard
Then boot the Switch with the exploit as in other tutorials, or if you used the Docker image linked above, run bash -x 02_exploit.sh wait a few seconds then run bash -x 03_uboot.sh and the Switch should boot Linux and after a few seconds, switch to a graphical interface. At the first boot it'll be in portrait mode. Tap on the icon at the very top right of the screen, open the preferences window and you can change the rotation in the display settings.
What works:
Download pre-built images: https://github.com/cmsj/switch_linux_kit/releases/tag/2.0
There are download/install instructions on the download page
This is now being distributed as a pre-built exploit chain, and a pre-built SD card image, so it should be a lot easier to install/run than before. You can still build it all from scratch of course, if you want to (https://github.com/cmsj/switch_linux_kit is the repo and there are instructions in the README.md)
Old post content below:
I've written a script to build a full Ubuntu Desktop image for the Switch (see a screenshot below). There are some instructions here, but be aware that you'll need a Linux machine to both build and run the boot exploit, and to build the Ubuntu image if you don't want to download my image.
First of all, you need to get the fail0verflow exploit/boot chain working. There's a good tutorial for doing the whole thing here or there is a good Docker image you can run that will do the work for you (but you still need the tegra_mtc.bin file (download here courtest of @CptPotato ). This is non-optional whether you want to use a pre-built Ubuntu image or not.
Next, either clone my git repo and run ./build-image.sh or download the bionic.tgz tarball from here. As with all the other systems, you need a micro SD card that is partitioned with one small (formatted) FAT32 partition, and a large (formatted) ext4 partition. Once you have the SD card ready, extract bionic.tgz to it with something like: tar xvf /path/to/bionic.tgz -C /mountpoint/of/SDcard
Then boot the Switch with the exploit as in other tutorials, or if you used the Docker image linked above, run bash -x 02_exploit.sh wait a few seconds then run bash -x 03_uboot.sh and the Switch should boot Linux and after a few seconds, switch to a graphical interface. At the first boot it'll be in portrait mode. Tap on the icon at the very top right of the screen, open the preferences window and you can change the rotation in the display settings.
What works:
- 3D acceleration (although it seems slower than it should be, but this code only landed in Mesa *very* recently)
- WiFi (but you need to tell Ubuntu to reboot and when the screen goes black, re-run the full exploit chain)
- touchscreen
- Bluetooth (somewhat, it seems to be a bit unreliable)
- Light sensor (but you'll probably want to turn that off in the system preferences, because it's very annoying!)
- Audio
- Joycons
Last edited by cmsj,